[From Bill Quinlan] When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at MacWorld, the computing world was abuzz with excitement, but when the excitement abated, the resounding question from the Apple community was: where is the wide-screen iPod? Many of us in the Palm community already know the answer to that question: the Palm TX
Before anybody accuses me of Apple bashing, please know that I have been happily using Macintosh computers since I bought my first one in 1984. But I have never been enamored by the iPod, iTunes or the iTunes store and I absolutely hate DRM of any kind.
My wide-screen iPod is my Palm TX. Its 320x 480 display rivals the iPhone's screen and its screen is 3-3/4 inches wide on the diagonal compared to 3-1/2 for the iPhone and presumably a wide-screen iPod. With it I can play all my music and listen to audio books and podcasts using the pocket tunes application which comes loaded for free on the Palm TX. I have 2-2GB SD cards and a 4GB flash drive. This gives me the equivalent of the high end Nano and the just announced iPhone. I store all the music I value or need on my SD cards. I rip my owned CDs using iTunes, but that is the only thing I do with iTunes.
For movies, I use TCPMP and will ultimately purchase The Core Player once it comes out in a trial edition and I can personally confirm that it runs as well as TCPMP. I rip my owned movies with FairUse Wizard. It is slow but has many options to let me convert my owned DVD into an avi file that plays great on TCPMP and fits easily on my SD cards.
For picture viewing, I use Media which came bundled with the Palm TX. With the Palm's wide-screen, picture viewing is great and all the pictures I need fit easily on my SD cards.
For reading ebooks (including the just released CIA Factbook for 2007), I use Palmreader. There is a free version but I bought the pro version and love it!
Why doesn't Palm spend some of its advertising budget promoting the Palm TX as a good alternative to an iPod? It runs circles around the iPod and even will when and if a wide-screen version is released!